Vatican City, Sep 30, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- The Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering watchdog, Moneyval, began its two-week on-site inspection of the Holy See and Vatican City Wednesday.
According to a Vatican statement Sept. 30, “the scope of this phase of evaluations” is to assess “the effectiveness of the legislative and institutional measures” adopted by the Holy See and Vatican City in recent years.
This evaluation follows Moneyval’s first on-site visit to the Vatican in 2012, as well as three progress reports, the last of which was in December 2017, the statement said.
Moneyval carries out the same evaluations on all its member jurisdictions.
Carmelo Barbagallo, president of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority, described the inspection as “especially important.” “Its outcome may determine how the jurisdiction [of the Vatican] is perceived by the financial community,” he said on July 3.
After the 2012 visit, the Vatican agreed to comply with a set of “recommendations” from Moneyval, incorporating them into internal policies. The two bodies have issued periodic updates on the Vatican’s progress.
The 2020 evaluation will likely be looking to see how well these recommendations have been incorporated by Vatican offices, and at the role of APSA, which functions as the Holy See treasury, sovereign wealth manager, and administers payroll and operating expenses for Vatican City.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
White smoke rises from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel on March 13, 2013, signaling that the College of Cardinals has elected a new pope. / Credit: ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images
ACI Prensa Staff, Mar 5, 2024 / 19:30 pm (CNA).
In March … […]
Pope Francis during the weekly general audience at St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, Sept. 7, 2022. / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Sep 7, 2022 / 04:24 am (CNA).
God can speak to us in the unexpected moments of our lives if we learn to listen well to what he is telling us in our hearts, Pope Francis said on Wednesday.
“I will give you a piece of advice: beware of the unexpected,” the pope said Sept. 7 at his weekly public audience.
“Is it life speaking to you, is it the Lord speaking to you, or is it the devil? Someone,” he continued. “But there is something to discern, how I react when faced with the unexpected.”
Francis’ general audience was again in St. Peter’s Square Wednesday after it was held inside the Vatican’s Paul VI auditorium in August to avoid the worst of the summer heat.
Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
The pope opened and closed his encounter with the public by riding the popemobile around the square. The audience marked his second week of catechesis on the theme of “Discernment.”
As part of discernment, the pope encouraged people to reflect on their reactions to even small, unexpected circumstances, such as the surprise arrival of one’s mother-in-law.
“I was quiet at home and ‘Boom!’ — my mother-in-law arrives; and how do you react to your mother-in-law? Is it love or something else inside? You must discern,” he said. “I was working well in the office, and a companion comes along to tell me he needs money: how do you react? See what happens when we experience things we were not expecting, and there we can learn to know our heart as it moves.”
Pope Francis said knowing how to really listen to your heart is an important part of discernment in making a judgment or decision about something.
“We listen to the television, the radio, the mobile phone; we are experts at listening, but I ask you: do you know how to listen to your heart?” he asked. “Do you stop to ask: ‘But how is my heart? Is it satisfied, is it sad, is it searching for something?’ To make good decisions, you need to listen to your heart.”
Pope Francis during the weekly general audience at St. Peter’s Square, Sept. 7, 2022. Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
To illustrate his point, the pope recalled the story of the conversion of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a soldier enamored with stories of knights and chivalry who was forced to confront his future happiness after he was badly injured in battle.
Bored while his leg was healing, Ignatius read stories of the saints and the life of Jesus when other books were not available to him.
Francis quoted from Ignatius’ autobiography, in which the future saint wrote about himself: “‘When he thought of worldly things’ — and of chivalrous things, one understands — ‘it gave him great pleasure, but afterward he found himself dry and sad. But when he thought of journeying to Jerusalem, and of living only on herbs and practicing austerities, he found pleasure not only while thinking of them, but also when he had ceased.’”
“In this experience we note two aspects, above all,” the pope said. “The first is time: that is, the thoughts of the world are attractive at the beginning, but then they lose their luster and leave emptiness and discontent; they leave you that way, empty. Thoughts of God, on the contrary, rouse first a certain resistance — ‘But I’m not going to read this boring thing about saints’ — but when they are welcomed, they bring an unknown peace that lasts for a long time.”
He emphasized that “discernment is not a sort of oracle or fatalism, or something from a laboratory, like casting one’s lot on two possibilities.”
Francis also said that some of life’s big questions often arise after “we have already traveled a stretch of the road in life.”
Sometimes, we can get stuck on one idea and end up disappointed, he pointed out, adding that doing something good, such as a work of charity, can get us out of that rut by bringing us joy and happiness, feelings which can lead to thoughts of God.
The pope also shared a piece of wisdom from Saint Ignatius: to read the lives of the saints.
“Because they show the style of God in the life of people not very different to us, because the saints were made of flesh and blood like us, in a narrative, comprehensible way. Their actions speak to ours, and they help us to understand their meaning,” he said.
Sometimes, he added, “there is an apparent randomness in the events of life: everything seems to arise from a banal mishap — there were no books about knights, only lives of saints. A mishap that nonetheless holds a possible turning point.”
“God works through unplannable events, and also through mishaps,” he said. “Mishap: What is God saying to you? What is life telling you there?”
At the end of his general audience, Pope Francis expressed his closeness to all mothers, and “in a special way, to those mothers who have children who suffer: those who are sick, those who are marginalized, those who are imprisoned.”
“A special prayer goes to the mothers of young detainees: let hope never be lacking. Unfortunately, in prisons there are many people who take their own life, at times also young people. A mother’s love can save them from this danger. May Our Lady console all mothers distressed by the suffering of their children,” he said.
Vatican City, Oct 24, 2017 / 06:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An initiative from the Vatican this month is inviting people to virtually connect with Pope Francis and learn more about Church missions and how to support them.
MissioBot is an automatic chat system on Facebook Messenger, which helps guide users through a chat experience with words from Pope Francis. Through any computer or smart phone with the Facebook Messenger app, users can learn about mission projects around the world.
The participant then has the opportunity to pray for particular intentions or donate to specific causes, such as orphans or victims of famine. People will also be able to click on “Papal Wisdom” to receive snippets of advice from Pope Francis.
MissioBot is available for the entire month of October in commemoration of World Mission Sunday, Oct. 22.
In a press conference on Saturday, Cardinal Fernando Filoni, head of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, emphasized that mission work is an essential aspect of the Christian faith.
“In the Christian faith, there is a pulse that gives life to the body. If the pulse stops, we enter into crisis, shock,” said Cardinal Filoni, adding that the pulse of faith is mission work.
Every Christian is called to be a missionary in some way, he said, pointing to Saint Francis Xavier, who spread the Gospel by traveling to Japan, and Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, who supported missionaries through prayer.
World Mission Sunday was begun in 1926 by the Congregation for Divine Worship and is now promoted by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Mission Societies.
The Pope’s message for the 91st World Mission Day was published by the Vatican earlier this year. Pope Francis said that World Mission Day “is a good opportunity for enabling the missionary heart of Christian communities to join in prayer, testimony of life and communion of goods, in responding to the vast and pressing needs of evangelization.”
Leave a Reply